Former Ivorian international footballer, Bonaventure Kalou, has been elected the Mayor of Vavoua, a city located in the central part of the country. The former Paris Saint-Germain player was elected during last Saturday’s municipal elections in the country, where he ran as an independent candidate.
“I have a feeling of pride and I have an emotional thought for my father, (who died in 2016) who would have liked to be mayor of this area, I’m following in his footsteps,” he said after his victory was confirmed.
Vavoua is located in the centre of the main cocoa-producing region of Ivory Coast and Mayor Kalou will be leading a city with over half a million inhabitants.
Despite it being located in Ivory Coast’s cocoa haven, the city is crippled by poverty, the roads are muddy, strewn with garbage cans and many of its inhabitants live without running water or electricity.
“There is a sense of pride and also relief at having been elected against an electoral apparatus,” Kalou told the media.
“This fight was also for other footballers. It is often thought that footballers are good only to hit the ball, we confine them in a role. I wanted to get out of this scheme. You can be a footballer and do politics or become an intellectual,” he added.
Bonaventure, 40, has a younger brother known as Solomon Kalou who also played football. Bonaventure, the latest ex-player to join politics, played for Ivory Coast in the 2006 World Cup in Germany, where he played in two matches and scoring once. Kalou reached fifty caps with the Ivory Coast Elephants before retiring from international football. Additionally, he won the Coupe de France twice during his time at PSG and Auxerre as well as the Dutch championship while he played for Feyenoord.
Over six-and-a-half million Ivorian voters took part in the municipal and regional elections on Saturday to choose nearly 200 mayors and 31 regional councillors.
The vote comes less than two years to the country’s presidential election in 2020 and marks the end of a campaign period characterised by heavy tensions.
To quell these tensions, about 30,000 policemen and soldiers were deployed across the country to ensure voters exercised their franchise where about 400 independent candidates took part in the elections.
Saturday’s election witnessed President Alassane Ouattara’s Rally of the Republicans and the Democratic Party of Cote d’Ivoire, whose leader is former president, Henri Konan Bedie, contesting against each other after ending their coalition alliance.
Meanwhile, loyal supporters of former president, Laurent Gbagbo boycotted the elections.
